Ex-Sheriff's Office Official Blasts His Former Employer On Kyron Horman Investigation

Bruce McCain, who served in the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office for 26 years, takes a hard look at his old shop in a lengthy post today on KPAM talker Victoria Taft's blog.

In questioning the way MCSO has investigated Kyron Horman's disappearance from Skyline Elementary on June 4, McCain, a lawyer who often shares his opinions on public safety issues with media interviewers, will no doubt offend not only some old colleagues but the devoted followers of the tragic Horman saga.

McCain, who retired from the sheriff's office as a captain, criticizes the amount of overtime some MCSO employees have earned. But his real beef is that MCSO treated Horman's disappearance as a "search and rescue" case rather than a criminal investigation. He writes,

So why did the Sheriff's Office respond to Kyron's disappearance by launching a massive Search & Rescue (SAR) effort and not considering this a crime? The answer lies in the nature and history of the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office. Today MCSO is primarily a corrections agency with typically 80% of its budget going to run the county jail system. The law enforcement component of MCSO is a relatively small component of the agency responsible for patrol and investigative services for the unincorporated areas of the county, primarily Corbett, Sauvie Island and some parts of the West Hill (sic).

McCain then delivers perhaps his strongest point:

The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) is Oregon's largest police department with 95 budgeted detectives. At PPB, the position of detective is actually a promotional position from police officer as opposed to a rotational assignment as in many smaller agencies. Portland's 95 detectives are more than MCSO's total number of law enforcement sergeants and deputy sheriffs combined and dwarf's MCSO's detective unit of six deputies. Yet Portland's vastly more experienced detectives have been conspicuously absent from the Kyron Horman case as MCSO tried to solve this case mostly without Portland's help, despite the recent announcement of the cost-shifting Task Force.